When he pushed open the door of 22 Lake Street Clinic, the stale air unique to Hell's Kitchen hit him in the face.
Jessica sat behind the triage desk with her legs propped up, holding a half-eaten box of pizza and staring intently at the old CRT television.
At the scrape of the metal hinges, she turned her head, half a slice of pepperoni still hanging from her mouth.
When she saw Yang Ming's sand-stained windbreaker, she swallowed the pepperoni.
"Four days?" Jessica glanced at the calendar on the wall, then back at Yang Ming.
"You call that a vacation? Did the Hawaiian sun melt your wallet, or did you beat up security at Waikiki Beach and get deported?"
Yang Ming tossed his backpack onto the couch, took off his coat, and hung it up.
"The UV rays were too strong. Bad for my skin." Yang Ming walked over to the water dispenser and poured himself a cup of cold water.
"Besides, looking at too many bikinis on the beach causes visual fatigue. Better to come back and admire that face of yours, with its simple, working-class beauty."
Jessica rolled her eyes and pushed the pizza box farther away.
"Oh, please. Nothing about you looks like you've been on an island vacation. Your soles are covered in yellow sand, and your clothes smell like gunpowder. You weren't digging for oil in some trench in the Middle East, were you?"
A woman's intuition could be absurdly accurate.
Yang Ming didn't answer. Holding his paper cup, he walked over to the television. A press conference was being broadcast live.
At the center of the screen, Tony Stark wore a slightly oversized suit, his right arm in a cast and a sling around his neck.
Rather than standing behind the podium, he sat